We made a lot of changes and simplifications to the licensing of Valentina Server under Valentina Developer Network, but we think you'll have questions about it, especially if you are a long time VDN customer. Please use this thread to ask questions and Ill do my best to answer your questions (results will be rolled into our FAQ).

The higher levels use the same connections system as Valentina Server 6 (ie separate, higher levels for SQLite Server)

For example, under the previous license, if you had a customer who wanted a 30 connection version of Server, you would give them your 5 connection and then buy a +25 connections for them (they would end up with 30 connections).

Now, you have the new "25" level of VDN - which then you could deploy the 25 connections VDB (REST / REPORTS / Valentina DB) / Unlimited Connections SQLite Server version to ALL your customers, in unlimited numbers.

We still have one "per deployment" option, which is Unlimited VDB / UNLIMITED SQLite.Server, and that's still the same price as previously.

If you wanted more, we told -- use additional connections, which was PER SERVER.
so if 100 customers wanted 20 connections, you was need
* purchase 100 copies,
* get 100 different license files, file was to 1 OS
* send that files to each user.

If later another 200 your users want more connections, you again need purchase, get, send, install....

NEW VDN:
You can buy at FLAT (!!) price a single license_emb_xxxxx file,
which can have 5, 10, 25, 250 connections.
DONE.

Now it sounds as simplification? :-)

* It is really more simple for YOU - developers.
* It is also less expensive, because now you have FLAT price for unlimited deployment (of 5 - 250 connections).

I have been on the road the last 30+ hours. Ruslan's explanation is quite good.

Many VDN customers never need more than the base version. Since 5 connections are usually enough for a small office of 25+ users, that usually takes care of most SMB type / workgroup deployments. The 10 connections now allowed for SQLite Server expands on that even more.

A large number of VDN customers ended up ordering again and again the same X number of connections because that's how they would set up their product schemes. That meant every time they sold a product, they'd come back to us and buy a +25 or something like that. It made it tedious and sometimes confusing for them and how they had to explain it to their customers.

A smaller number of customers have really wild variations in numbers of connections but it appears to us to happen very rarely. They also happily deploy the 5 connections version too. For them, the single deployment Unlimited / Unlimited makes sense.

We also looked at competitor's offerings, too - not just on price but also price for features. Now not everyone will need every feature. If you look only at the new Valentina SQLite Server pricing, it is very competitive to what's out there. If you look at Valentina Reports Server (which is on Windows, MacOS X and Linux) as compared to other reporting options, its very competitive to what's out there. The Valentina DB Server of course its hard to compare to others because it provides some rather unique advantages. With VDN, you get all of these together.

Following scenario:
We have customers from lets say one to 50 connections for VDN server.
If we buy the 25 connection flat license and we've let's say 95% customers
who only need 10 connections what do we sell them? With the old licensing
we sold them the 10 connection license but now we would sell them the
25 connection license only. Or does the 25 connection license include
a license for lets say 10 connections?

Our current prices for our customers mirrored your license scheme and we
could distinguish between lets say 10 and 25 connections. Smaller customers
payed less, bigger a bit more. When I understand it correctly then we have
to buy 10 and 25 connection flat license to support the old price scheme.

The majority of customers will be fine with 10 connections but now we've to
buy the "bigger" 25 connection license too for our 4% customers who need that.
And what about the 1% of customers that need more then 25 connections? Do we
have to buy the 250 connection license too to support that in the future?

Unlimited license:
Is the unlimited license per project or per customer?

I'm looking forward to your reply. Then we've to see if we need to change
our prices and license scheme for our clients and customers.

I'm afraid we have to explain that to our customers.
Unfortunately, our current project has been published recently.

thank you for your reply. I've also got an answer from Ruslan (which I can't see here). He thought about returning back to the old license model for better granulatrity. Don't get me wrong, I'm also fine with the new model as long as it would be possible to distinguish between user needs somehow. If lets say a 25 connection license includes a 10 connection license I'm fine. That'll serve all we told to our clients before and you won't have to change anything. Maybe you can consider if this would be an idea that the bigger license includes the smaller ones.

How about whatever the top number of connections are supported, we also support all below it with additional files? For example, if your top plan is for 25 connections, you'd also get license files for 24, 23, 22, etc. That would give you more flexibility.

Also, how soon do you need such a solution? You have an active VDN license now I think - is that right?

Hi Lynn,
that sounds perfect to me and for our projects. I'm on vacation for the next two weeks, so it would be nice to get such a solution by the end of november or december. Currently I've an active VDN license until next year and we'll renew them as well as all our current projects will use valentina as database.
Best Regards,
Thomas